Sunday, February 24, 2013

Sex Pistols last UK concert 1977 - eye witness account

Found in a scarce 1977 punk fanzine Dat Sun which also has a Wyndham Lewis inspired 6 page 'Blast' against current stuff. Anonymous*. It covers the last (or penultimate) appearance of the group on British soil at Cromer, Norfolk on Christmas Eve 1977 (punk's annus mirabilis.)

God rest you merry gentlemen in a quarter of an hour the Sex Pistols will play. We slip into the Links pavilion and buy tickets - easier than the village dance. Due to slippery disputes and reports of cancellation in the East Anglian they had not sold out. Dub Disco falls heavily on country in years, 75% East Anglian punks. Johnny Rotten in fashionably squashed pith pelmet surveys the audience critically from the balcony : Sid Vicious tries on T-shirts. The audience is a bit shy of them, and pretends it hasn't noticed. There is no mystique about the boys arriving in a limo or helicopter at the last big moment - the group are, it seems, actually waiting for everyone to turn up before they play.

The hall is mercifully free of posers, backstage passes, obnoxious roadies, boring rival celebrities, pushy photographers and all the detritus... a few old politicos, beards and folkies (typical of the area) perplexed but pleased. Straw-haired country boys and sturdy young girls in daubednightshirts mix with Suffolk/Norfolk rich children back for Christmas with their parents.. just as they were getting a little tired of the unfamiliar dub music the Sex Pistols trooped down to the stage -Rotten takes of his helmet to reveal laughably wild Struwwelpeter hair which he touches up with an aerosol. In his sardonic deliberate voice he upbraids the audience for their passivity and general lack of seasonal rowdiness called: 'why can't you be more like us' - the assembly takes the ticking off without a murmur. A couple of tattooed musclebound types standby to keep the peace but play no part in the ritual. They kicked off with God Save the Queen -instant pogo, instant gob. The band is loud and raucous JR is naturally the focus of attention, his ironic, irreverent visage a sneering delight. He won't fit in any pigeonhole, you can only describe in by negative – he is no puffed up strutter, no maacho git, there is no real vanity. He is nothing but himself. From the very first numbers you realise that just one of his songs has more wit and sussed than the entire oeuvre of ELP, ENO,and ELP. Seriously man.Surly Sid vicious stands close by, barechested and daintily mutilated. His role in the band apart from genius bassist appears to be a mix of sedition and sex appeal. The muscle and no small part of the wit is down to Steve Jones whose playing is devastating, colossal.. Hidden away behind his drums , literally out of sight, is the unassuming Paul Cook – so sure-footed,so central to the entire racket. A backbeat you cannot lose, what more do you want? The main body of the audience's pogoing or relaxing apres pogo. There is some spitting which, of course, goes unreprimanded and miraculously seems to miss the sensitive lads. Talking of miracles Johnny Rotten threw 30 or 40 cans of beer to the thirsty dancers. Long hairs with rubber bands pogo, black rubbish bags pogo, nobodies in anoraks pogo, cats in corduroy pogo, fishnet tights pogo. It's all a good laugh, the very opposite of 'No Fun'. This latter number they do far better than on the single although JR misses out on the splendid intro. Cries for 'Bodies'. Forget all that abortion stance stuff – this song is done as a big demoniac laugh.A few more observations on Rotten, seeing as it's the first time most of us Anglians have seen him. He doesn't take himself seriously as other rock stars – stupid fools who stand in line. He has an endless range of facial expressions from deeply offended to deeply menacing. He glances around between vocals like an insolent buffoon or a crackerjack comedian trying to cheer up the dispirited boys and girls. . He rakes the audience with his glassy, joke fanatical eyes; he jerks his mischievous grinning bonce about like a chicken -'you steal with a kiss.' What was he wearing? A tasteless ripped and torn salmon pink T-shirt held together with safety bid and large laced shoes which people get unlacing... There were a few ex tempore changes to the lyrics. On 'Submission'; perhaps inspect inspired by the sea air, he chimed in with 'I do like to be beside the seaside' on I'm a lazy sod he change 'when your money dies' to a rather pointed 'when your business dies.' Some were also accused of spending 'a cheap Christmas in someone else's misery.'

I noticed in the galleries chaps who could have been councillors or cops, watchdogs or dogsbodies. They must've been somebodies anyway to have been up there. [Deadline watchers?] We watched particularly when the Sex Pistols, followed the underrated situationist inspired 'Holidays in the sun' with 'Belsen was a gas' - but it was cool, it seems to be a continuation in the mood of 'Holidays' with some great scat laughter as at the beginning of 'Anarchy' but much extended. 'We've done everything' Vicious reminds Rotten and the Patriots troop off -encore 'God save the Queen.'*Thought to be the work of one Denis Browne -noted as the author by the punctilious pop music writer Jon Savage.

2 comments:

Excellent except for one small important detail now this is I like etc. The following day they played two gigs for the families of striking firefighters in Huddersfield. One was the children's matinee show and the other was for adults. Then they flew off to the USA. The rest is History. Accounts of the quality of the performance of the Cromer links gig do vary. Used tickets were handed out afterwards, stamped "Bollocks." by the management. So double plus ++ excellent.

... World Brain of H.G. Wells, an olla podrida, a rag bag of information, trivia and data. The conception of a sublime, leisured future. A hotch potch, a mélange, a farrago, a salmagundi.. Knowledge is power. Truth is beauty. Need to know this (and much more) on earth. A coming world of creation and idleness where time is spent in pursuit of knowledge and robots empty the waste paper basket. A dream of no work, all play and jack not a dull boy any more.

The oddest collection, passing strange, a saga, a fantasy, a dream…enter Captain Cuttle and the pedant Casaubon (a maligned man, Madam George). Keeping some sort of record with factoids, footnotes, ephemera, factbooks and discoveries preserved. An information bank, an interest bearing investment. An index of all knowledge, no less, laid out in the lost monograph- A proposal for an information sharing galaxy.

An amazing expanding archive, way beyond the algorithmic dream, post Mass Observation, many beautiful things no longer lost, bringing forth the mind of God, the all seeing eye - the library of Babel, Alexandria, far Antioch and the lost library of Zembla, the loot of cities. Universal access to all knowledge [A2K]. A vanished world recaptured. Notes and Queries honoured: New Encyclopaedists [Encyc2]. Nothing lost or forgotten. Time spent in research, curiosity and scholarship (the daring to be dull) the Renaissance ideal, the Victorian vicarage - just 4 hours a week of money yielding work. By Timothy! The answer is written on the wind, on the wall of the world. So much to know. Sums are not set as a test on Erasmus, much glory to Aaron Swartz... "He had a tale to tell." Madam, I'm Adam. Exit, pursued by a bear.

Jotcloud 101

"…new books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion, &c. Now come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments, jubilees, embassies, tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels, sports, plays: then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons, cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals, burials, deaths of Princes, new discoveries, expeditions; now comical then tragical matters.To-day we hear of new Lords and officers created, to-morrow of some great men deposed, and then again of fresh honours conferred; one is let loose, another imprisoned; one purchaseth, another breaketh; he thrives, his neighbour turns bankrupt; now plenty, then again dearth and famine; one runs, another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps &c... [Robert Burton]

What's the big idea?

Q. Where did the idea of jot101 and 'jotting' come from?

A. We knew a collector of esoterica who wrote notes and comments about his reading which he called his 'jottings.' It came from there. The information is not necessarily amusing, interesting, quirky or strange - but a 'jot' is generally new and original information or an advance on existing facts.

Q. So you would like jot101 to be a place where people archive research and notes from their readings?

A. Yes, but also information that they have come across in their work, in travel, from friends, in anecdote, in their family and in old books, periodicals, pamphlets and letters, manuscripts, notebooks and ephemera. Also obscure data, eyewitness reports, documents, photos, snapshots, press cuttings, diaries, biographies of seemingly unimportant people etc.,

Q. How does it differ from something like Wikipedia?

A. Much of the material is too minor and outside of the scope of an encyclopaedia. It is more about the preservation and curation of documents and ephemera; much of the information is beneath the Wikipedia radar (not notable enough) - it is closer to material referenced in their numbered footnotes …or the kind of information on which an encyclopaedic entry is based, part of the infrastructure... Jot101 is nearer to a mix of YouTube and the Victorian journal Notes and Queries in the way that people simply upload or record things they have found which are then in categories and searchable. The spirit of Notes and Queries is relentless curiosity and thirst for knowledge - however abstruse.

Q. Have you considered building a website and attracting contributions?

We already have a few contributors. We envision, in this century, a site where people seamlessly upload new information that they have found without having to create a website or a blog. Also where it is automatically codified along the lines of (say) the great Melvil Dewey and available for all eternity.

Remind me -what is a jot?

A jot is a piece of information. It is usually original and adds to our knowledge of the subject. Examples below:

The Terry-Thomas explanation.

Using the much loved gap-toothed British comedy actor Terry-Thomas as an example we show what is, and what is not, a jot.

Terry-Thomas's favourite drink was champagne. My father had a bar in Majorca and in the early 1960s Terry-Thomas holidayed there. He claims that T-T met Belinda Cunningham his third wife in his bar.It was called El Garito and catered for a louche Bohemian crowd. Terry-Thomas always called for champagne.

YES. Slight, but new information.

Terry-Thomas with his gap toothed smile and permanent cigarette holder always reminds me of my Uncle Derek who was thrown out of the Army in 1955 for stealing the mess takings. He was a 'bounder' too!

NO. Irrelevant information, adds nothing.

Terry-Thomas who everybody thought was such a 'bounder' and so terribly funny never made me or anyone in my family laugh. I think he was pretty lame.

NO. Opinion, and no new information. Also hard to believe...

I met a guy who had worked on a movie with Terry-Thomas. It was being shot in one of the hardest parts of Glasgow and after filming T-T insisted on dragging him and the crew to an exceptionally thuggish hardcore pub. T-T was in fine form, loud and posh and full of the joys of life and celebrity. He didn't change his style one iota for the local hard nuts. The guy thought there would almost certainly be a punch up but strangely the locals thought he was great and admired him for being exactly who he was and not changing his style.

YES. Good story, hopefully true and new information. A few more facts like the date, the name of the movie and the name of the pub would be even better.

So a jot adds new and original information, it is not irrelevant and it is not opinion. Every single posting on jot101 is a jot.